Blogmas Day 3 -War On Earth (Goodwill To All Men)

I was going to do you a toffee recipe today, but then.

I wasn’t shocked by the vote to bomb Syria, to be honest. I thought we were going to since the Paris attack. But it was, what, half an hour, between the result and us actually dropping bombs? So soon?

I could list you reasons why I think this is a terrible strategy, such folly, such hypocisy, storing up so much trouble for the future. But I won’t – there are other people who do that far better than I do, and anyway, I think it’d be a waste of time – you already agree. Instead, a story.

In early 2005, ten years ago (WHAT??). I was eighteen, and on the way to my first proper demo. I was in my first year of Uni, and I’d decided to Do Some Politics. How exciting!! And I thought war was bad, obviously. I’d been to meetings, and I’d read [the wikipedia page about] Marx.

I got the coach up from Coventry, and I didn’t know anyone except the PhD student with the bright blue eyes who’d told me about it in the first place. But I fancied him a bit, so I obviously couldn’t sit next to him. Instead, I sat with a little old lady near the back. We got chatting.

“I think the war needs to be stopped,” I said, eighteen-year-oldishly. “It is foolhardy to wage a war on terror. It’s an emphemeral concept! We wouldn’t have gone to war if it wasn’t for the oil. It’s just capitalism.”

She smiled at me and said,

“I grew up in Coventry, you know?”

And I nodded  and smiled back, a bit disappointed. I’d wanted to Talk About Politics. Should have had the balls to sit with the PhD student. She went on.

“And when I was a little girl, there were bombs falling on us. All the time. We used to hide under the dining table, me and my sister. We were so scared. I’ll never forget what it felt like, doing that.”

And I looked out of the window as Covnetry flashed past us. Not a single building over 50 years old. I hadn’t even thought about it. War is something that happens to other people, in other places, far away. She shrugged.

“I just don’t want any of the foreign kiddies to have to hide under their dining tables and be frightened. That’s all.”

I missed the rally at the end of the march, that day. I’d worked up the nerve to go for a beer with the PhD student. But I’d already been rallied. I’d realised, your politics don’t have to be clever – it’s okay to be soft-hearted. You can oppose war (or austerity) purely because you don’t want kids to be bombed, to be hungry. You can be Dr Who, and not bear to see suffering caused. What other reason is there, to do anything? What’s any cause for if not to stop the hurting, when you really boil it down?

And if you’ve  got a cause, if you’ve got something you want, you know what to do. You protest, and you write letters, and you say it, over and over again. It’s natural to be sad about it (too sad to blog about toffee!) but if you can, you have to do something as well – even if you’ve been doing it for 10 years, or 50 years, and it doesn’t look like it was working. Maybe it works, a little, slowly. One of the men who organised that rally is leader of the opposition now.

And anyway. What else are we going to do? There’s nothing to be done but keep going.

See you at the next march.